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As part of a court order, the City will, at or by 3:00 p.m. each day, give advance notice of planned property removal (“sweep”) actions in the County of Honolulu. You can see the City notices at: We will try to publish these regularly, in order to

Give people time to save their belongings

Let activists and advocates wishing to be present plan to do so

Get feedback about potential violations by the City of the

Let the public better track tax payer resources the City is devoting to “disrupting” the homeless.

If you think the City is destroying property again, please send us an email to alert us! Video, photos or other recordings are especially helpful.

WHY DOES THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION CARE ABOUT SWEEPS?

The work of the ACLU on issues surrounding homelessness and extreme poverty is grounded in the simple concept of fairness. A growing number of misguided laws are rapidly criminalizing being poor. Poverty and homelessness in Hawai‘i today, as in the nation, has a component of racial injustice, being concentrated disproportionately among Native Hawaiians and racial and ethnic minorities. The frequent denials of civil liberties to which poor people are subjected have long been a serious civil liberties concern. Even worse, these policies do nothing to address the root causes of homelessness and often worsen conditions for the poorest and most marginalized.

The failure to solve the problems of poverty inevitably results in violations of civil liberties and civil rights. Government policies seeking to eliminate the homeless from public spaces often have dire civil rights outcomes. The poor are denied due process, the right to privacy, equal protection of the law, and other constitutional guarantees far more seriously and far more frequently than the middle class and the wealthy.

People experiencing homelessness have the same fundamental rights under the U.S. and Hawai‘i Constitutions as those who are not homeless, yet the day-to-day reality regarding the exercise of those rights is much different between the poor and the wealthy. Laws targeting certain behaviors (e.g. sit/lie bans, proposals to create/change laws re loitering, confiscation of possessions, civil commitment procedures) may be unconstitutional if the laws are selectively enforced against a particular group or if the laws are so vague and/or overbroad as to violate everyone’s rights. In every case, the ACLU is open to forging reasonable compromise with government officials – but is also ready to go to court to assertively protect fundamental rights and stop government abuse of power.